James, Arun and I are on an SAS flight back from Stockholm to NY. Danielle took an earlier flight. The testing of the machines and devices that will turn the Stockholm factory building into a musical instrument this coming September ("Playing the Building") went very well. The sounds were louder than we expected, partly due to the reverberant quality of the room, and the metal columns, pipes and girders resonated even more than we hoped, and more musically, at least in most cases.
Jan Åman, who runs this alt art facility (Färgfabriken), a former factory, told us over dinner one night at a Kurdish restaurant that he was becoming increasingly involved in Stockholm civic affairs and urban planning and was making the factory space less exclusively about exhibiting contemporary art. I don’t know if finances motivate some of this change in policy, but he also seems to have a desire to blur the border between the art world and the rest of the community. Some of what he mentioned in his plans was clear to me, and some of it was baffling. I wondered if the confusion in my mind might be due to my own narrow view of what constitutes arty activity.
Regarding urban panning he mentioned that Swedish people like to feel that they are always relatively close to wild nature — that even in a big city there was a desire for easy access to untamed lands which for them is more important than having manicured parkland nearby. What this means in practical terms I am not sure. To me it implied that urban planning had to be able to respond to variations in cultures, as that seemed like a specifically Swedish desire. Different cultures respond to urban environments differently.
I was reminded of a discovery that Jane Jacobs made about urban parks and the quality of urban life. She determined that the size of parks was not so important a factor in how successful they are. Sheer amount of greenery, she claims, is irrelevant, which seems at first glance counter intuitive — don’t we all think that more parks and bigger ones will make for a more habitable and pleasant urban life? What was more important, she discovered, was only partly a result of the quality of the park itself. In a way what is more important to the success of a park is what surrounds it. What is outside the boundaries of the park does more than what is inside to determine what it is and what if can become.
It is more important, for example, that the surrounding community have mixtures of residential, business and leisure activities. And that these activities take turns using the park. That secretaries and assistants take their lunches there in the middle of the day, that moms take kids there in the mornings and that couples and the elderly might stroll there in the evenings. Then the park isn’t ever empty at certain hours of the day, a condition that often leads to its eventual decay. She also states that the multiple uses and activities in the surrounding communities must lead people to walk through the park in order to get to work, to school, home, or to a movie or restaurant that lies on the other side. The park has to be something you need to pass through, not go to, and definitely not go around. If it is placed on the side or edge of a community, for example, it runs the risk of becoming a scary unused place. It needs to be more than someplace to make special trip to. (Except if there is a destination on the far side like a lakefront or riverside to draw people into and through the park.)
Over all what Jan and Färgfabriken are hoping to accomplish in this way was a bit mysterious to me. Maybe on my return trip to install the piece in September it will be clearer.
I began to think about my perception of what art is and if the European perception of it might have evolved to be somewhat different than that of us who had just arrived from the U.S. This musing was based on Jan’s civic planning discussion.
I asked him if it might be possible that due to the fact that the U.S. art world is so completely market-driven maybe we who live there have adjusted our definition of what constitutes art according to, well, what is saleable in galleries and at auction. In NY it seems fairly clear that despite the dream that art exhibitions, whether in galleries or in museums, are forums for complicated feelings and for new ideas, they are possibly more like car showrooms, where the latest models are paraded and applauded. To question the whole idea of what is a car or what it is for in such cases is something that would never even occur. In a similar manner we eventually begin to internalize what we believe art is according to whether or not it fits into a particular system. I wondered to myself whether the sometimes creatively dubious world of European state cultural patronage might have the effect of releasing this “product” (art) from its function as a commodity. If it is state funded it doesn’t necessarily have to be saleable, and therefore what it can be is up for grabs. It becomes completely open — at least open to the extent that some state functionary funds it and isn’t concerned with making a commodity.
State patronage can also have the unfortunate effect of fostering laziness and bad art. Grants awarded based on convincing and properly presented proposals. More traditionally state support funds politically motivated statues of noble workers, soldiers and generals on horses. But we’re talking about contemporary Europe, that’s not as prevalent as it once was. It’s nowhere near a foolproof system though. But, just as easily, the market driven system often fosters slick-looking art about not much at all, and a lot of navel gazing. Art about art.
Cultural relativism I guess it’s called.
For example, it’s been claimed the Japanese traditionally had no word for art, at least not as the West thinks of it. And the idea of art being a personal expression, a flag of individuality, is also an idea imported from the West. In Japan and in other parts of Asia, it’s more about continuing a tradition, evolving a craft. It’s more artisanal than Art, at least Art as the West would view it. In fact, the intense Western focus on individuality seems from the Easter POV almost crass, narcissistic, excessively self promotional — anti-group and therefore anti-social.
There’s also (traditionally at least) little distinction between what the West would consider decorative and fine art. Tea ceremony utensils, for example, are highly prized and revered — the way fine art is in the West — and not because they are “creative” manifestations of their makers’ personalities, and certainly not because of the time it took to make them (often they are raw and simple.) In addition, they are utilitarian objects. The idea of working imaginatively and beautifully within restrictions is admired, more so than breaking free of those restrictions.
So, a contemporary Japanese artist like Murakami possibly doesn’t see a conflict in doing both Louis Vuitton bags and gallery paintings, while for Westerners it seems the two possibly conflict.
Anyway, back to our preconceived ideas about what it is and what it’s for.
I was reminded of Andre Malraux’s statement that painting as the dominant art form over the previous few centuries was due to it being portable and therefore easy to trade and transport from seller to buyer. Mural painting and frescoes metaphorically came off the walls, became smaller, got framed, and eventually were made less exclusively for the church (where they were originally NOT portable — unnecessary, as the patronage was secure and the fresco was not about to be moved to a collectors mansion). The resulting portable objects could be collected, acquired, traded, and valued — and though any art object has no intrinsic value — like paper money or bonds — it is backed up by an elaborate system by which the value of the object generally increases in worth. Museums help validate the value, importance and legitimacy of these objects, as do critics and hangers on.
So, up until fairly recently when one thought of fine art in the West, whether exhibited in a museum or taught in schools and universities, one immediately imagined paintings — mostly landscapes and portraits — as the prime and obvious examples. There was sculpture too, but that was a little bit harder to move. The extent of marketability affects our definition of what constitutes and defines any activity. Well, in this particular system.
So I asked myself, what if the state patronage for culture that has arisen in Europe over the recent decades changed that definition? What if the need to make something portable and saleable doesn’t exist quite as much in some places? Wouldn’t that then begin to open up the idea of what art could be? Set it free? Cut it lose? Alright, the trend towards installations, the ephemeral, odd materials and massive scale was all happening anyway, but it was all still happening inside the rarefied art world, the definitions were still being written by the collectors and insiders. The general public is more or less ignored — they are therefore understandably uninterested and unaffected. Who cares what goes on in the insular nutty world of stamp collecting? As long as they leave the rest of us alone they can charge whatever they like for whatever crazy thing they trade amongst themselves.
Being cut loose also means that the place where art happens and with whom it engages no longer need be limited mainly to galleries, museums and auction houses. It could be more mixed in with the other stuff we do in our lives. Like urban planning or sports or hair salons or…
If the artists and eventually the institutions aren’t dependent on whether or not a thing can be sold then maybe things start to become somewhat unmoored from their meanings. The system begins to unravel. Maybe that is good thing. Our ingrained thinking and definitions about what constitutes this art thing (in this case) become not quite so automatic. Or become completely irrelevant. Artists make projects on the web, as they do now, institutions become activity centers rather than exhibition centers and maybe there is even some civic involvement and community activities which come to be regarded as being as important and as relevant as making concrete once was things.
Well, is that possible? Is it desirable? Is that what I sensed was going on?
Probably not. I’m probably seeing a mountain of significance in a molehill.
